As I opened the menu at Deli-News, the self-proclaimed “New York-style restaurant,” I casually asked my Brooklyn-born-and-raised Jewish friend what qualifies a delicatessen as New York style. Two hours later, I stumbled out of what could have been a long, neurotic Woody Allen movie. “It’s a Russian-Jewish thing,” he snapped. “You see this bagel. You see how this bagel shines. Now that’s a bagel.” I ate the bagel. “Now, you see this pastrami,” he snipped. “This is real pastrami. It’s got the right amount of fat and it’s steamed. It’s not too thick. It’s not too thin.”
